by Faith Hunter
Kits . . . , Beast thought, the word filled with longing.
I scrubbed Little Evan’s head, mussing his hair, and said to Eli, “Thank you.” I opened the fridge and asked, “Got anything to build muscles in this form?”
“Babe.” Which meant it was a stupid question. Wiping his hands, keeping an eye on his workbench, Eli said to EJ, “Don’t touch. Remember?”
“I ’member.” EJ crunched down on cereal, his eyes mischievous. “I’m a good lil boy.”
Eli sighed as if he knew better than to believe the assertion, stepped up beside me, and pointed. “Roast. Steak. Eggs. Name it.”
I had eaten eggs at breakfast, able to keep two down. “Steak. Let’s start with a couple pounds and move on from there.”
Eli chuckled. “And then we spar for a while. That last attempt was pitiful.” Eli turned on the stove grill and pulled a steak from the fridge.
“Mmmm. Beat your butt this time, I betcha,” I growled in my deeper voice.
“Beat ya butt! Beat ya butt!”
“Molly’s gonna kill you, you know,” Eli added casually, turning the gas up high to sear the steaks.
“Yeah. Shoot me now.”
EJ giggled and slammed his fists down, scattering Cheerios on the floor. “Soot me! Soot me! Soot me!”
Eli managed not to laugh at me and picked up my godson, placing him on the floor. EJ squealed and took off running in the general direction of his parents’ suite. Eli slapped the steak on the stove grill and made the kitchen smell wonderful. Within minutes, he gave me a mostly raw steak cut into bite-sized pieces so I could pretend to have good manners. If Molly was gonna kill me, at least I’d go out with a full belly. In that odd comfortable silence of family, I watched Eli finish the weapon maintenance and clean the bar while I scarfed down several pounds of meat.
As I was wiping delicious beef grease off my lips, Alex walked in and plopped a sheaf of papers onto the bar top. “Your appointment of Grégoire to the Dark Queen’s Warlord, thoroughly vetted and approved by Bruiser and the Robere Onorios. Read and sign.” He clicked a pen open and held it out to me. I didn’t bother to read the papers, but I knew that what I was doing would change the way vamps lived in Europe for . . . maybe forever. I signed with a flourish. Grégoire was going to love being Warlord. And I had managed to avoid having to go to war in Europe. Go, me!
I signed a couple dozen siggies and handed the papers to Eli. Feeling much better about things, I sat back against the barstool and opened the nail polish.
“Can I paint them?” Angie asked from behind me.
“Ummm.” I had a mental image of my nails after my goddaughter painted them. It wouldn’t be any worse than my own job. “Sure. Why not?”
Angie Baby climbed onto the barstool near me and took the bottle of polish. EJ clambered up on the weapon-free bar top and crawled over to watch, lying with his belly on the cold stone, seemingly without discomfort. Angie patted the seat between her legs and I carefully placed my oversized paw-foot on the barstool and wiggled my toe pads. She giggled and pulled the brush from the bottle, the acetone stench ruining the leftover steak scent. She caught her tongue between her teeth and began painting my nails, her brush strokes slow and smooth. The scarlet was the perfect color.
“It’s pretty,” she said. When I didn’t respond, she asked, softer, “I can’t feel my Edmund in my head anymore. Is he gonna be okay, Ant Jane? Am I gonna have my knight back?”
Edmund had sworn fealty to Angie and her entire family, to be their protector, and somehow the two had formed an unexpected mental bond. In the same way that he had been ripped from me, he had been ripped from Angie, and then he had, in the manner of vamps, locked his mental shields down so we didn’t suffer while he suffered. But I had no way of knowing if the mental bond could or would be restored and had no way to explain all this to Angie.
“Yes,” I said, sounding utterly positive, “Edmund is going to be okay. And he will always be your knight, whether we feel him in our heads or not.”
She nodded, her strawberry blonde curls sliding forward as she painted the hard-to-reach little claw. “I miss him,” she whispered.
And I was right. It took most of the bottle.
* * *
* * *
It was long after sundown, a light snow again falling, when Alex shouted that he had a text claiming visitors were arriving. On the way to the front door I glanced at the screen, spotting a gaggle of snowmobiles pulling into the long drive. In half-form, I walked to the door, turned on the welcoming lights, and stepped outside. The roar of the snowmobiles blasted the silence from the property as the first two vehicles accelerated, dashing up the long driveway, creating ruts in the blanket of snow. Lincoln Shaddock’s people were here.
The first two vehicles were shiny black. They slowed, then stopped, and two vamps stepped off the snowmobiles at the same moment, each moving as if dismounting from a warhorse. The riders hadn’t bothered with coats, because some vamps don’t care if it’s cold or if they look human, and these two were that sort: African, tall, with chiseled bodies and features, carrying themselves with an assured arrogance that demonstrated their power. They were putting on a show of strength. They succeeded. The snow falling on their dark skin and black clothing wasn’t melting, and though I knew vamps were cold-blooded, it was always disconcerting to see the proof. These two were powerful; they would be formidable opponents if I had to prove myself to them. I could smell the vamp scents of ginger, fresh-cut grass, and faintly of jasmine. One was male and one was female and I didn’t know them.
Beast peered out through our eyes and snarled with my mouth. A challenge.
Hearing the sound, the two vamps paused, taking in my pelt, my bipedal stance, my nonhuman body shape, my brightly glowing yellow-gold eyes, and the man with guns standing at my side.
Eli nodded to them, a single jut of his head. “The Dark Queen welcomes you,” he called out. I just watched. The two didn’t relax. But they didn’t run or attack. Good so far.
Behind the vamps, six more snowmobiles emerged from the uphill curve of the drive, moving at slower speeds into the open land of the front entrance, toward the parking area. The vehicles were each painted in dazzling shades, from red to mustard yellow to a vibrant blue with flames painted on the sides, and they carried heavily clad humans, riding double. All six snowmobiles pulled sleds with hard covers, likely full of supplies and luggage.
Eli stepped in front of me and leveled his toy at them. He didn’t know the two vamps in front and so he carried an Uzi capable of taking them all down in a hail of bullets. If it didn’t jam and misfire. Miniguns were apt to jam at the worst possible moment, but Eli carried plenty of weapons if that happened. He was clearly worried about what we couldn’t see on the sleds. “The sealed trailer with windows is a Cat Cutter,” he murmured. “Cutters are sleds that carry people. Could be an ambush from Shaddock or factions from his people.”
Twelve humans. Enough for four vamps. They had two vamps and a cutter. We had Shiloh, so who was the fourth vamp?
Blowing a miasma of exhaust, the vehicles stopped in a ring around the front entrance and the engines went dead; a waiting silence fell on the property. One of the sleds creaked, the sound sharp after the roar. The two vamps turned and faced the sleds, standing at military parade rest, their positions managing to keep Eli and me in their vision.
On the biggest sled, the one I assumed was the cutter, a bird-wing-type hatch rose into the air. Eli didn’t tense, so much as flow, toward the movement. The two unknown vamps flowed too, and drew weapons, pointed at us.
Ambush, Beast thought.
From the cutter, long legs moved like spider legs, feet sinking into the deep snow. Lincoln Shaddock himself emerged. Before anyone started bleeding, I called out, “The Dark Queen welcomes Lincoln Shaddock, Master of the City of Asheville. We didn’t know you were coming, my friend.”
Eli didn’t relax, indicating that he wasn’t convinced Shaddock’s appearance was a good thing.
“Jane Yellowrock,” Shaddock called back. His voice was rough and soothing at once, just as I remembered it. “Or should I say, my Dark Queen.” He bowed deeply before he took the front steps two at a time, leaving his human bodyguards and the new vamps behind.
I caught his scent and put out a hand to welcome him.
“Let me see you, girl,” he said. He took my hand and turned me around in an unexpected dance twirl, scrutinizing me. “I assumed they were joshing me about you being half-cat, but darned if they weren’t speaking the truth. I wouldn’t have recognized you without them yaller eyes,” he said in his hill-country vernacular. “I like the look.”
The vamps and Eli stood down at the dance move, their weapons smoothly disappearing. Even if I had never seen a vampire before I’d have known what they were. More important, both wore silver studs in their ears. Vamps were allergic to silver. The silver was a calling card that said the two were very, very powerful and a lot older than I had thought. They might not have a city of their own right now, but they were masters. Strangers.
Dangerous, Beast thought. “You brought food,” I said. “I can tell by the smoked-meat scent on the air. With this crowd, we’ll need it.” Shaddock owned and was the chief chef in his own BBQ joint in downtown Asheville. Best smoked food ever. I gestured to the door and continued politely. “The forecast suggests we’ll have a few days before the snow starts again, but getting to the store will be difficult.”
Shaddock gave me another bow, very slight, something that might have been common in his human time, and stepped to the side. I entered the inn and he followed. “You’ve learned Mithran manners,” he said more softly. “Can’t say it makes me happy, but if they avert another war, it’ll be worth hearing you talk like one of us. And yes. We have a whole cow, half of it ready to serve. The other half is raw for any weres or skinwalker beasts—” He stopped and stared at my teeth as his people began to bring in supplies and his vamp security pair filed in behind and began to scope out the place. “You eat cooked or raw in that form? And how the blue blazes do you talk with fangs?”
“Cooked. And the same way you do when your fangs snap down, you old fanghead,” I grumbled.
“There’s the Jane Yellowrock I know,” he said with a human-style grin. “Rude, crude, and delightfully socially unacceptable. Makes me feel right at home.” He turned and called, “Kojo. Thema. Come and greet your queen.”
The two dark-skinned vampires flowed across the open area and stopped in the foyer, in front of Lincoln. I took them in as they moved, and tensed. “We do not bow to you,” the man said to Shaddock in liquid syllables.
Kojo’s accent was vaguely foreign: not Cajun, Spanish, Latin, or Leo’s old-fashioned French cadence, not the more modern version of the language. This was something flowing and ancient with swift and clear vowel sounds, curling like wavelets capping on a lake, brushed by an approaching summer storm. Maybe an African intonation. His tone slipped into something sarcastic and insulting as he looked me over. “Therefore, why should we bow to her?”
In an instant, Shaddock moved, a strange popping sound of speed and displaced air. Kojo was flat on the floor, a stake in his belly, paralyzing him.
Ooookay.
I didn’t react. Eli did. The sound of multiple weapons schnicking echoed in the space. The entire front area went dead silent. Eli was aiming two weapons, one at Kojo, one at Thema. Battle wariness.
Shaddock had taken Kojo down. Thema was still standing, but she slid slowly to the floor. Shaddock had thrown a stake and hit the female vamp in the belly at the same time he took down Kojo. He had been expecting trouble. And dang, the MOC was fast. Shaddock also had excellent control. His fangs were fully extended, yet his eyes weren’t vamped out.
“Kojo and Thema.” Shaddock’s fangs schnicked back into the roof of his mouth. He indicated the man and woman in turn. “They were ton-tigi in Mali. Lost their hunting grounds and their clan around 1350. They’ve been traveling for the last few centuries, seeing the world.”
With my half-formed ears, I heard keys clicking and knew Alex was searching for ton-tigi. “Mali?” I asked as my partner holstered one weapon, pulled the stake from Thema’s belly, and aimed the remaining semiautomatic weapon at her head. Her fingers formed a fist, but she lay still. To Shaddock I said, “If they’re working for you, they don’t seem very reliable.”
“We have sworn to kill the Makers,” Thema said. “Anyone who fights our enemy is our ally. But you are weak and the smell of sickness is on the air.”
“The Dark Queen,” Eli said quietly, “killed Joseph Santana, also known as Joses Bar-Judas and Yosace Bar-Ioudas, the elder of the Sons of Darkness, and fed his body to the white werewolf.”
The woman, splayed on the floor, braced her arms and sat up. She turned slowly to me, her eyes wide. “This is true? You killed one of the Makers?”
Makers. Probably an ancient name for the Sons of Darkness. Gotcha. Snow had melted on her from the warmth of the room, her hair wet and glistening, her clothes spotted and drenched with damp. “Pretty much.”
“He is dead? Forever? Never to rise?”
Except for that pesky heart. I really needed to deal with that last body part, which was in the hands of Jodi and the NOLA witches. Didn’t say any of that. I said, “Unless he can resurrect himself from Brute’s crap, no. He isn’t coming back.”
Thema reacted to that, a flash of some unnamable, almost-human emotion that seemed to be composed of humor and joy and grief all at once. She managed to get to her knees, one hand over her belly wound, the tang of unfamiliar vamp blood on the air. “And the young Son of Darkness is here? The Son of Shadows is here,” she emphasized, “in this place? This is true?”
The Son of Shadows. Yeah. That fit with the whole “shadow thing” in Edmund’s mind.
She drew a knife that gleamed wicked bright in the lights. Eli went all tense/still/dangerous, his weapon in a two-hand grip, aimed at her head.
“He’ll be in Asheville tomorrow,” I said, my eyes flashing between them, Shaddock’s security all scary vampy and Shaddock slouched against Kojo, watching the rest of us.
There was something new and powerful about Shaddock, a leashed, contained capacity for violence, the way a bomb looks before it devastates the landscape. Casually, the MOC removed the stake in Kojo’s abdomen. He licked the blood off the wood in a gesture that was nonchalant, oddly amused, and all vamp.
I finished, “The Flayer of Mithrans will not be progressing to the inn. He has a place in town.”
“There is no place at the inn,” Shaddock said, laughter in his tone, oddly quoting the Bible as he pulled away from Kojo.
“We will destroy the Flayer of Mithrans,” Kojo said. He sat up in measured movements, reaching for a matte gray case big enough to hold a rocket launcher. “And all he holds dear. We will wipe the lives of his loyal ones from the face of the Earth.” He flipped up large thumb locks. Holy crap. It held some kind of rocket launcher. Shaddock’s new vamp said, “We will scorch the land where he stands and none will escape us.”
Two of Eli’s weapons were out again, one aimed at the kneeling Thema, the other aimed directly at Kojo. “Touch that and die,” my partner said softly.
Everything went still and silent, the way it did with any threat. I could hear Shaddock’s humans breathe, short and shallow, the breath of prey when they caught sight of a predator.
Eli said, “This is the Official Winter Court of the Dark Queen of the Mithrans. You do not draw weapons in her presence. You fight with her, at her command, or you leave her territory. This is not up for discussion.”
Kojo swiveled his head toward Shaddock, that inhuman move vamps could make, more bird than mammal. He started to vamp out, his pupils dilating and his sclera becoming a bloody scarlet. Shaddock ignor
ed him, amused, watching me. He tipped an imaginary hat at me. This was a test of the DQ. He’d set me up. Dang fanghead.
But . . . I had not taken up the mantle of power Leo had given me nor the power of the Dark Queen. Some of the people I loved had been captured or gone missing because I hadn’t done my job. Others may have died.
I hadn’t done my job because I was sick and it was too hard. Woe is me. Except I wasn’t sick right now. It was time I fixed things. And with vamps, might meant right. And that meant over Shaddock too.
“Kojo,” I growled. The vamp twisted his head to me like an owl, too far, too smooth. “This is the hunting territory of the Master of the City of Asheville. But it is the political territory of the Dark Queen. You fight with me and at my command, or you die. In the moment. And Master of the City Shaddock dies with you, for the insult to my position and power. Choose.”
Shaddock tensed.
Yeah, I thought. You want to play vampire games? Try me. “You brought them into my territory and home,” I said to him, all vamp-formal. “It is my right to drink down all of you.”
“You aren’t a vamp,” Shaddock said.
Softly I whispered, “Try me.” He said nothing, his body tense and hard, but his expression uncertain. “I’ve stayed silent and out of action too long,” I said, hoping he understood my words and the meaning beneath them. “People in Europe have died. That is not happening here.”
Kojo said, “You would take from me the realization of a goal that is seven hundred years in the making, woman?”
“Pretty much. First of all, you don’t get to blow up my enemies long-distance. I will not allow collateral damage of the humans in my territory. Second, our enemy has my primo. He’s using Edmund to communicate and I want Ed back. I’m not giving up my people. Third, my Onorio needs blood, but I can suck it off the floor and feed him if necessary.” I figured that last part was insulting enough to prove I was the bigger predator.
Kojo’s lip curled and he stood, a willowy, sinuous movement that would do a big-cat proud. Shaddock allowed the movement, stepping back. “You will understand this. I have been used as Translator by the Flayer of Mithrans.” The title Translator was imbued with pain and hatred and fear. “I will destroy the entire world before I allow him near my soul again.”